Fact and Fiction

What do we really know of the past? I think we all have a strong tendency to picture it very much as we have seen it in movies and television, perhaps read it in a novel, and generally have a stilted view. I know that the Sherlock Holmes stories influence how I see the late Victorians and picture London. Likewise, the Hornblower stories of C.S. Forester, or the more recent novels of Patrick O'Brian about his naval heroes Aubrey and Maturin, strongly color the view of even professional historians about war at sea in the age of Nelson. Fortunately, both Forester and O'Brian were excellent researchers and built convincing stories on the exploits of figures like Lord Thomas Cochrane and on Nelson himself. I have seen their works cited to provide examples in more than one naval history in recent years. Perhaps the intent is simply to provide a context that many readers will quickly understand, but it does create an interesting tension between fact and fiction. How much does a historian writing this way tend to mingle the historical and fictional characters in his mind?

When I was working on my dissertation, Kenneth Branaugh's production of Henry V was released. I was working on the sixteenth century, not the fifteenth, but I know it did have some influence. One of the figures I focused on was Sir John Smythe, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth, a sometime soldier, and a thoroughly pedantic and old-fashioned writer on military affairs. He advocated giving up firearms and returning to the good old longbow of Henry V's time. Shakespeare is supposed to have based the character of Fluellen, one of Henry's officers and advisers, partly on Smythe. Ian Holm played Fluellen, and did so in a way that would have fit Smythe like a glove. I am not sure how much this influenced my view of him in the dissertation, but I think it did have some effect, possibly reinforcing my view of him as a pedant. (Curiously, others think Fluellen was based more on Sir Roger Williams, another Elizabethan soldier who was diametrically opposed to Smythe, and about whom I also wrote.)

Another figure I wrote about was Blaise de Monluc, considered as one of the models for d'Artagnan, even though he lived a century earlier. I do know that the fictional character made the real one more attractive to me, and perhaps more accepting of some of the tales of adventure he told in his memoirs.

I don't want to belabor the point, but it is good to realize that historians may be just as influenced by literature, movies, or television as anyone. The effects may not be great, but their subtlety can easily color their depiction of the character and personality of their subjects.